STABBED AN ARTERY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3490, 19 May 1920, Page 5

STABBED AN ARTERY.

YOUNG MAN CAUSES A SENSATION. CHARGE OF ATTEMP’P]3D SUICIDE AUCKLAND, May 18. “It’~sA an absurd che.rge,’;’ declared Franklin Jno. Smith, vaudevifie art‘isl:, who was charged before Mr Lisdn, S_M., to-day that he attempted to commit suicide by jabbing a knife into the artery of his left arm.

The admitted circumstances were that on Saturday afternoon the police got word that Smith was at the hospital with a punctured wound in his arm, a stitch having to be put in the wound, which had bled copiously. As Smith wa_s on bail awaiting trial at the Supreme Court on a serious charge, he was arrested. Evidence of the porter at the Metropolitan Hotel was that as he was cutting a "pipe of tobacco in the hotel, Smith stepped up to him from a group of men, asked for the loan of his knife, took it to a mantelpiece, crooked up his lbared left arm on the mantel and drove the small blade of the knife into -his arm. As the arm was straightened blood spurted out. The men surged round eiicitedly to stop the bieeding, but Smith laughed and fended them ofi, declaring that things were all right. Eventually the licensee came on the scene ,and sent Smith by taxi to the hospital. The explanation made was that Smith and others, in tl'fe course of. filling in time between drinks, got into a discussion on hypnotism, the subject being introduced by the presence. of Professor Dalmaine, who protested to an unbeliever that he had come to discuss a “spot,” not to talk shop. Smith took up the cudgels for his showman business, and un(_lcrt.ook to confound sceptics by a demonstration of what he called hypnotism, autosuggestion, will control, etc. He proposed to stick pins into his arm, but someone shouted in disgust, “show us something new.;” He éalled for the knife and did the deed as narrated.

Smith, in the box, ridiculed the charge. He ‘bared his uninjured arm and explained, lby demonstration, how blood was forced back from the veins of the f-Orearm by muscular contraction, so that the prick of a needle, or even a knife would not draw blood. With‘ a showman’s"in'stinct, he waved one hypnotic hand over the bare arm so as to conjure the vital fluid back and forth, wherefin the Magistrate ir~ ritably salled “E»nough_” Witness said that when -he had miscalculated his stab, he declined to have the flow of blood stopped at 'first for fie’-Er that if it were stopped too soon there would be danger of blood-poisoning from the tobacco-stained blade, and afterwards, when Dalmaine went to put on a tourniquet, the excited crowd in the bar prevented him from getting it on.

Claude Arthur Dalmaine, -hypnotist, stated that when he wished to avoid the bar discussion on the sufb-ject, Smith. who almost got. annoyed over sceptism on the point, jumped in and did as stated. Without any of Smith’s tfeatricalism, witness explained that certain muscular contractions would force the blood back temporarily from the forearm when a. needle or knife blade could be safely pushed into the flesh, provided arteries were av-oided. Smith misca.lculated, and cut an artery, but he had two or three times previously seen Smith successfullypierce his arm with a knife blade, and had quite frequently done it himself. He was quite oer. tail! fFOII‘- Smithfs demeanour that there was nothing else in the incident. . l

The Magistrate remarked that after hearing Dalmaine’s evidence he was inclined to give Smith the benefit of the doubt, and would dismiss the case on condition that the man paid the costs of the prosecutiron. His Worship added that he thought a tag should be put to 'Smith’s"bail Fond to keep him ‘out of hotels till he satisfied the law on the othe:"?:‘fi§lrge. V